QuickBooks Time vs TradesTimer
What QuickBooks Time is
Cloud-based employee time tracking inside the QuickBooks ecosystem, built for crews with payroll workflows.
Best for: Construction companies with 10+ employees already using QuickBooks Online for payroll and invoicing, where payroll sync is the main value.
Pricing at a glance
$20 per user / month (minimum)
Base plan $20/month plus $10 per user; higher tiers add scheduling and geofencing at extra per-user cost.
Verified 2026-04-15
$0 for five days Five-day app trial
Pro (US$6.99/month or US$49.99/year) provides continued tracking, timeline review, and encrypted cloud backup. Local store prices vary.
QuickBooks Time strengths
- Deep integration with QuickBooks Online payroll
- Crew scheduling and shift trade features
- GPS geofences that auto-clock employees in and out
Considerations for self-employed tradespeople
- Per-user pricing is punishing for solo operators — you pay the same seat fee as a 50-person crew
- Geofences must be drawn around every jobsite in advance, which defeats the purpose for trades who visit 5-8 new addresses a day
- Requires employees to clock in and clock out, even when the operator is a sole proprietor
- Location data is stored on Intuit's servers, not on your device
Experiences with QuickBooks Time
These quotes come from public discussions about QuickBooks Time. Each quote links to its source.
We have crews working on multiple job sites, often with staggered start/end times, and it’s getting harder to stay on top of hours, breaks, and overtime … I’ve looked at TSheets, Raken, and ClockShark.
TSheets is QuickBooks Time's old name. Staggered multi-site days are exactly where clock-in/clock-out models leak hours — which is why TradesTimer records the day passively instead of asking anyone to remember.
They are not receiving an invite to quickbooks time and they are not able to see the schedule or clock in/out. Checked spam folders and junk folders.
In an invite-and-admin system, hours can't even exist until the office plumbing works. A tracker with no accounts has no invites to go missing.
Why I built a QuickBooks Time alternative
I ran time tracking (plus orders, parts, and invoicing) from the back office of an electrical contractor with about ten guys on the road. Clock-in systems fail the same three ways everywhere: someone forgets to clock in and you rebuild his morning from memory; someone clocks into the wrong job and the wrong customer nearly gets billed; or the office hasn't set up the job number yet, so the hours have nowhere to land. We had a full-time person — me — catching those. A solo operator has nobody.
QuickBooks Time is built for that shop I worked in — payroll sync, crew scheduling, an admin watching the timesheets. If that's you, it's a fine tool. If you're one tradesman invoicing your own hours, you're paying per-user prices to run a system whose whole design assumes an office that you don't have. TradesTimer replaces the ritual, not the office: the day records itself, and you name the jobs after the fact — no PO required before your hours can exist.
What TradesTimer does differently
- Five-day app trial without payment details, then Pro for continued tracking
- No jobsites to set up — stops are detected automatically as they happen
- Location history stays on your phone; no cloud account required
- No clock-in ritual — the timer is the day itself
- No cloud account required — your location history stays on your device
Which app fits your needs?
QuickBooks Time is the right pick if you already run payroll through QuickBooks Online and have employees to manage, and the $20+ per user per month fee is a rounding error against your payroll. TradesTimer is the right pick if you are a solo tradesperson or a crew of 2–3 who just wants billable hours reconstructed at the end of the day — a five-day app trial lets you try the workflow before subscribing to Pro, without predefined job sites to maintain.
Page last verified 2026-04-15. If QuickBooks Time has changed pricing or features since then contact us at support@tradestimer.com to request a correction.
Five days to try it. Pro to keep tracking.
The upcoming paid release includes five days of tracking without payment details or automatic charges. Continue with Pro, including encrypted backup. Exports remain available after the trial.
- Automatic stop and trip recording
- Unlimited stops, drives, and days
- Review and edit stops and trips
- Rounded billable hours, exported as text or CSV
- Travel log with estimated distances
- 7-day summary view
- History stored on your phone
Canada: CA$9.99/month or CA$69.99/year. Both plans include the same features.
- Continued automatic tracking and timeline review
- End-to-end encrypted cloud backup
- Restore your full history on a new phone
- A backup stored separately from your phone
US prices are shown in USD; Canadian prices are shown in CAD. Your local App Store or Google Play price may differ. Subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled through the store where you purchased.
Control your location history
TradesTimer stores your history on your phone. Address lookups send coordinates to an address provider. You choose where to share your hours and travel exports.
If you enable Pro backup, TradesTimer encrypts your history before uploading it. Your recovery code unlocks the backup. See the privacy policy for details about address lookups, exports, and other data use.